Yat Siu's Occhis and Picots: Eyes and Frills

Siu's Occhis and Picots Reveal Animoca Brands' Strategy

Author's Note: These are preliminary thoughts based on my research through August 6, 2026. My team and I are working on the second volume of "The Telegram Labyrinth." The plan for this second monograph is to look at what may happen as Telegram continues to lose traction. The outcome of the French criminal trial could have a greater impact on Telegram as an important "rail" in the Web 3 ecosystem than service blocks in Iran, financial nastygrams from Australia and Russia, and the machinations of those who depend on Telegram for certain "essential services."

The Model: Ling Temco Vought's

Animoca Brands is a 21st-century Ling-Temco-Vought. Yat Siu (born in Austria) is the Web 3 version of Jimmy Ling (an American of European descent). Ling was a financial engineer who "redeployed" the financial assets of the firms in which he invested or acquired. Good idea. However, Ling's stitching together companies and his financial engineering did not work out. Siu's approach is to substitute crypto as the financial foundation of Animoca.

LTV's debt and exogenous shocks like the decline of the US steel industry resulted in liquidation in the early 2000s. One can follow LTV via its Securities & Exchange Commission filings and public information. Determining the financial status of Animoca Brands is more difficult. Siu's acquisition (reverse merger) with Currenc Group has encountered headwinds due to an absence of audited financial reports.

I want to hypothesize briefly about some of the information surfaced as I work on the second volume of "The Telegram Labyrinth." This study pivots on one assumption: Telegram is deteriorating. The French criminal trial hangs over Pavel Durov (the GOAT or greatest of all time in Russian technology). Russia has amped up its charges against the sleek Durov. Australia has piled on the GOAT with allegations of terrorism. Other signals of issues include rumors of staff defections, service takedowns, and technical glitches in Montenegro.

Siu is actively building out his Animoca Brands conglomerate. He too is a financial engineer and a violinist to boot. I want to compare (metaphorically) the elaborate construction of more than 600 companies, investments, and deals to my grandmother's hobby: She cranked out doilies, placemats, and collars for her female grandchildren's go-to-church clothing. I recall watching her yellowed fingers moving swiftly and automatically to generate knots, designs or motifs, and joins between the picots. (My hunch is that tatting is an unexplored terrain for you.) Tatting is a craft technique used to create lacework by tying knots and loops with thread. Knitting uses interlocking loops. Tatting is tying knots.

So what do these terms "occhi" and "picots" mean? Each is part of the tatting aficionado's jargon. An "occhi" is an eye or a hole. The "picots" refer to the odd loops of thread left between knots. These can be decorative, but for a skilled tatting person, these connections allow the motifs to be joined together. A "motif" in tatting lingo means a pattern.

My view is that Animoca Brands and its list of companies on its Web site are a type of digital tatting. Don't worry. I will try to explain by offering two examples.

The MoonPay Motif

MoonPay is a legitimate privately-held company. The firm provides a fiat currency to crypto on ramp and a crypto-to-fiat off-ramp. An API allows seamless transactions. MoonPay relies on a stablecoin infrastructure. It is difficult to pin down the company's precise revenues, but my team and I have estimated that it has an annual turnover of 90 million US to 100 million US dollars. (We will refine this estimate as we continue our research for my new monograph.) Animoca was an early investor in the company.

Max Crown, after a stint at Max Crown Consultoria and some crypto-related firms, became the president of MoonPay. He allegedly created MoonPay's "Concierge" service for high net worth individuals. Concierge service is synonymous with virtual casinos term "VIP" for "Very Important Person." The idea is that people with big money get personalized service for their financial needs. Are these transactions made public? MoonPay remains a privately-held entity; therefore, it seems logical that some financial transactions are privileged, low profile, secret, or confidential. But who knows? Max Crown probably knew and knows.

How does MoonPay become an "eye" for Siu's stitching together of his LTV-type conglomerate? Max Crown accepted a job at the TON Foundation in April 2025 and then became the CEO of the TON Foundation. Then in August 2025 (one year after Pavel Durov's arrest), he added the title of president of the TON Foundation. This took place August 20, 2025. That's the date when previous President/Chairman Manny Stotz left TON Foundation to run the TON Strategy Company, a publicly-listed firm on the US Nasdaq.

The connection is straight forward. Siu to MoonPay. MoonPay to TON Foundation. In simple terms, Siu can send an email, text, or phone Max Crown and obtain information. Siu can make suggestions. In terms of tatting, this is part of the overall design of the Animoca Brands' strategy: Form connections in the crypto-centric, Web 3 datasphere.

The Alpha Compute Motif

Alpha Compute (né AlphaTON Capital) is a reverse merger in 2025 engineered by an interesting duo: Enzo Villani (a former Nasdaq officer) and Yuri Mitin (a Tony Robbins-type of character in the venture capital consulting business). The original idea for the company was to resell what's called AI compute. A data center with excess capacity signs up to have AlphaTON sell that capacity to Telegram. Telegram then has access to unlimited, price-competitive AI compute without any Amazon- or Meta-style billion dollar infrastructure.

The reverse merger with Portage took place at about the same time Max moved to the TON Foundation, and Manny moved the TON Strategy Company forward.

By early 2026, the AlphaTON AI compute positioning was not working. The value of the shares had fallen. Enzo and Yuri needed a way to distance itself from a tie up with a crypto-luminary directly linked to the Russian crypto and AI "organization" RACIB. (RACIB stands for the Russian Association of Crypto Industry and Blockchain. The group has some interest in AI as well.)

The PR remediation was to rename AlphaTON Capital to Alpha Compute. To diversify revenues, the renamed company announced an acquisition. What did Alpha Compute purchase? The new unit of Alpha Compute was the Animoca company GAMEE. Alpha Compute acquired a 60 percent interest in GAMEE. The GAMEE deal partially neutralized losses from the game company. Siu needed to tidy his balance sheet for his own reverse merger with CURRENC. Plus, Animoca retained a 40 percent share of GAMEE and a seat on the Board of Alpha Compute.

Thus, Siu obtained another motif with marketing picots and future opportunities to communicate with the Telegram-centered Alpha Compute, its leadership, and possibly some of its financial connections.

What Do These Two Motifs Suggest?

My take on these business plays is that Siu's support of the TON Foundation and his connection to Max Crown is one motif. The Alpha Compute deal is another motif. The two motifs can be connected via picots. Instead of a needle and thread, Siu can send a text to hook himself into whatever "play" or "deal" Alpha Compute or the TON Foundation arrange.

An added benefit of this tatting approach is that Siu has improved on the LTV model. Here are his innovations:

1. The core monetary concept is the "valuation" of crypto entities. Losses and gains come and go, and the result is that the "value" of whatever Siu tats together can be difficult to evaluate.
2. The tatted designs are virtual. True, companies like MoonPay exist, but the value of a privately-held crypto-centric entry is the support of the crypto believers, not a mom shopping at the local Costco.
3. Entities are registered in jurisdictions ranging from the British Virgin Islands to Hong Kong. Consequently any investor trying to evaluate where to put money in the Animoca Brands' holding company faces a big job to figure out the performance of these privately-held companies or "investments." Moving funds across jurisdictions offers some advantages to Animoca Brands too.
4. The structure of Animoca Brands is the embodiment of Web 3. Companies are distributed. Products and services are housed on service providers around the world. The concept of using digital currency is anchored in a desire to avoid the issues associated with fiat currencies and some old-fashioned banking principles.

Wrap Up

Tatting is not just an arcane analogy for the Siu empire or tatting construction. Each of his companies, investments, projects, or partnerships is a distinct motif. Siu connects the motifs as needed to his deals. The public list of 600 plus entity names provide marketing eye candy. Siu is a smart operator who presents Animoca as twenty-first-century version of Ling-Temco-Vought anchored in Web 3 technologies.

But there is an important difference. LTV’s structure and financial condition could be followed through audited financial statements, SEC filings, and other public-company records. Animoca operates through incomplete public paperwork, privately valued holdings, offshore entities, and crypto assets. The value, therefore, is difficult to pin down. At some point, however, it may come apart like my grandmother’s tatting after an unfortunate trip through the washing machine.

To wrap up, I want to come back to the headline and its "eyes and frills" wording. The "eyes" reference is the business organization's ability to let Yat Siu see what it is going on across his numerous investments.

Animoca Brands is important today, and our research suggests that it will become more important in the future. As we move forward with the second volume of "The Telegram Labyrinth", I will share more of our preliminary thoughts about Yat Siu, Animoca Brands, his desire to have access to the US capital markets, and what he learned when he ran afoul of Australian security regulations.

Stephen E Arnold, August 11, 2026